


Yielding Place to the New

by reine_des_corbeaux



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Anal Sex, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Foreshadowing, General Creepiness, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Incest, M/M, Making Out, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Power Dynamics, Tear-Licking, Tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:27:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23603071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/pseuds/reine_des_corbeaux
Summary: Arthur only wants to save his son. It doesn't work out.
Relationships: Arthur Pendragon/Mordred (Arthurian)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24
Collections: Smut 4 Smut 2020





	Yielding Place to the New

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/gifts).



> The "Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-Con" tag refers to the circumstances of Mordred's parentage. Stuff is only referenced as ambiguously unpleasant through disquieting memories, so perhaps "Implied/Referenced Dubcon" would be a better warning here.

It has been a week of feasting since Arthur found Mordred wandering outside the gates of Tintagel, requesting audience with the castle’s lord as soon as possible in a soft and sibilant voice from any man who passed by. Now, Arthur knows how lucky he was to have passed the young knight with the longsword, and to have concealed his rank when he saw himself in all the features of the young man’s face.

This hiding is the crux of his plan, wild and desperate though it may be, to turn Mordred away from anger and rage. Abstaining from kingship for a week or so, Arthur has decided, will help him begin to atone for his greatest sin and all that has come after, for the way he commanded his only son to be put out to sea, and the ways he has tried to forget ever since then. He will be the father he could have been, and at the end of it all, he will reveal himself as the king, and upon his knees, he will beg his son’s forgiveness and hope to see love and not hatred in Mordred’s eyes. 

But Arthur hadn’t counted on the lust. 

There have been moments, at table, or out hawking, or even if they spar (Arthur is always amazed by his son’s power with the sword. Was he so good at Mordred’s age? He doesn’t think so) when Arthur has seen Mordred’s eyes lingering over him. They are always moments when Mordred doesn’t seem to think Arthur is looking, and the gazes are always hawkish, always hungry. And yet, there is always a bit of need in those brown eyes, shadowed under their fall of red-brown hair. But Mordred’s eyes send cold down Arthur’s spine as he remembers other brown eyes full of pleading, and full of the same rapacious want. He tries to ignore the shiver that courses down his spine. He tries to ignore the way that people seem instinctively to draw away from Mordred, as if he casts a cloud of cold sea air around him, or as if his footsteps echo with the screams of the sea-eagle. 

It shouldn’t surprise Arthur then, when he finds himself alone in a room with Mordred, his private chamber. He shouldn’t feel a strange compulsion to usher out the few straggling knights, even those who usually guard his door. Mordred can clear a room with his presence, even when his soft, strang singing in the hall can draw an audience as much as Merlin’s ever could. It makes sense that they should wind up together, alone. Perhaps this is the moment he has waited for, in which he’ll call Mordred “son.” Already the words tumble in his head. _Your mother did a vicious thing to me, and I did a vicious thing to you, and it has haunted me every day since then. But you’re here and alive, and though I cannot expect your forgiveness, perhaps I can earn it. You’re my only son, and I’d like to recognize you as such._ It will be a hard thing to ask for, when he knows full well how Mordred’s hate is kindled against him, when he’s heard him mumble for revenge and sing songs of cruel kings brought down. 

“Mordred,” he says, and he licks his lips, preparing to say more. 

The low light from the last embers suits him, the flickering glow casting his pale, pale neck into high relief, making his eyes dark and hooding them with shadow, and for a moment Arthur imagines that neck covered in bruises, Mordred’s wine dark mouth open in ecstasy as he calls out for his father. He tamps the image down hurriedly, an unwanted spark in the tinder of his mind. 

Mordred stands and walks over to him. 

“I know what you’re going to say,” he says in his soft voice, so gentle, and yet always edged with sharpness. _An eagle’s voice_ , Arthur thinks nonsensically, _always sounds as though it’s from a smaller bird._ “Payment. I’ll give it to you.” 

“You don’t owe me anything, Mordred,” Arthur says. “You are in my hall as a guest, and as a guest, you have no obligation to pay anything.” 

And yet, he would give him his own golden circlet, if only Mordred asked. Mordred smiles slightly, a crooked grin playing over his lips. 

“But what if I want it?” Mordred asks. He stands above Arthur now, and Arthur rises to meet him. 

They’re of a height, of course they are. Morgause was always tall for a woman, and Arthur has never been a giant of a man. But Mordred is slighter, paler where Arthur’s skin is tanned from all his long days questing or at war, bearing fewer scars than Arthur. He’s young yet, still unmarked by the hand of war, Arthur thinks. Looking at Mordred, he sees that naked hunger once again flash through his eyes, but this time, he cannot tell if it is fastened on him or on something just beyond his reach. 

Mordred smiles and fear drips cold as seawater down Arthur’s back as the flames in the fireplace burn down to the lowest of embers. But beneath the fear lies something tender and something wild, some desire to take and teach Mordred in all things, to be a better lover to this lost young man than anyone else could ever be, because Arthur is older and wiser, and maybe Mordred will learn to love his father if his father shows him how love ought to be conducted. And with every thought, Arthur hates himself more. 

“I assure you-” Arthur starts to say, but the words die on his lips as Mordred inclines his head towards Arthur, putting a hand to the back of Arthur’s neck to bring their faces ever closer. Silence drowns the room, save for the crackling of the fire. 

_He’s your son, Arthur_ , he thinks, and yet he cannot draw his eyes away from Mordred shadowed and strong, nor can he bring himself to push him back. There’s breath tickling his cheek, and Mordred’s mouth is too close to Arthur’s own. He doesn’t want to bring their lips together, and yet, he wants to know how they taste. 

_Too much feeling will be your undoing, little brother_ , Morgause’s voice hisses in his mind, and the room spins around Arthur as he tries to unremember that night, though it’s been branded into his mind. If this is to happen, as happen it must, it cannot be with the same deception and the same fear. He’ll make it good for Mordred, and make it good for himself, though Morgause laughs in his head all the while. 

He shudders, and Mordred closes the gap quickly, gently. He pulls Arthur into a chaste, untried kiss, a soft flutter of lips against lips. It’s so hesitant, so seeming-innocent, that a shameful thought flies unbidden through Arthur’s brain once more: _I’ll teach him well, as a father should._ Arthur can feel himself stiffen, and a wave of nausea crests within him as he breaks away from the kiss, as he tries to let the guilt go, and when he speaks to Mordred, it’s as much for himself as it is for his son. 

“Here, let me. Just relax.” 

In a better world, where Arthur is a better man, a better father, a better king, this evening would have ended much like all the evenings before it with feasting, and separate bedchambers, and a plan to talk to Mordred in the morning, to ask him what he’d say if he knew his father cared about him, and regretted what he’d done on that May Day all those years before. What would Mordred say if Arthur brought him to court, and maybe didn’t acclaim him as a son, but kept him close and called him nephew, formally adopted him in the old Roman fashion, and made him heir to a kingdom? He’d tell his son that hatred never served anything but hatred, and beg him to reconsider all his plots and plans, and every unholy word Morgause put into his head. 

But this is not a better world, and Arthur is not a king of legend, so he does none of these things, and he kisses Mordred back, a portentous kiss that opens his mouth and draws him close as breathing, feels the heat of his mouth against the heat of Mordred’s mouth. In those long, slow moments, he wonders whether this might be the closest he’ll ever be to being a good father, the closest he’ll ever get to showing his son love. But love between a good father and his beloved son doesn’t come kisses and soft touches like this, or in Arthur’s fingers plucking gently at the hem of Mordred’s unbelted tunic and lifting it over his head to expose his wiry, pale chest, lovely and eerie in the dying emberlight. 

Arthur moves to unlace Mordred’s braies, but Mordred pushes his hands away and proceeds instead to divest Arthur of his tunic, and once it’s off, he leans in and kisses Arthur again. There’s a flurry of motion as braies are removed and abandoned, and then another moment of hesitant touching before everything seems to move faster, much faster. Mordred pushes Arthur backwards towards the bed, hands fumbling in Arthur’s hair, as if he’s trying to adhere their bodies and twine their destinies together. _Would that he knew we were already linked_ , whispers the part of Arthur’s mind that protests and thrills at every touch. 

Mordred is surprisingly strong for someone so wiry, some coiled energy hiding in his limbs and core. When they’d first met, outside Tintagel on the old Roman road in the grey light of morning, Mordred had been like a knight of the Otherworld, there in the time between, and when Arthur saw him, before he recognized his son-now-grown, a strange fear gripped his heart and made it jump in his throat. Now his heart is in his throat again, but the fear mingles with arousal as Mordred straddles him and leans in to kiss him, to run his calloused, swordsman’s hands along Arthur’s face as Arthur rises towards him. Again they break apart to breathe, Mordred already panting, pale face flushed. His weight in Arthur’s lap is so slight, too slight. Again, he thinks of falcons, the lightness of a killing thing resting on your body. _Through touch and care and covering the eyes_ , he thinks, _you make the falcon your companion. Tame the wild thing into a friend and helper_. 

Mordred kisses him again, and Arthur’s lips part to let his tongue in, to taste his mouth. This is a gesture of claimation, Arthur knows, but he cannot tell if he or Mordred is the claimed one. All the earlier innocence of that first kiss is gone, swept utterly away with little sighs and twining tongues, and breath in short, hard pants. When Mordred pulls away, Arthur whimpers in spite of himself. 

“I want you,” Mordred says quietly. “I want you in me and then I want you beside me when I battle for my birthright.” 

When Arthur hears that word, he hears “son” in every syllable, and it fires his loins even as it sends hot shame stabbing through him. He tries to think of Morgause, of the guilt and the horror and the wrongness, anything to stop himself now before it is too late, but all those memories of the pressing darkness vanish when he sees Mordred’s face, flushed with pleasure, lips parted, eyes wide. 

He cannot bring himself to say that he wants Mordred too, and so he touches him as gently as he can, trying to change their position so Mordred lies beneath him, but Mordred seems to show him elsewise, still stubbornly in his lap. 

“Like this,” he says. “So I can look into your eyes and see what you might look like in battle?” 

“Battle?” Arthur asks as he runs his hands down Mordred’s body, finding his arse with both hands, kneading the flesh. 

Mordred laughs softly. 

“There is always a battle to be fought.” 

He grasps one of Arthur’s hands gently, and brings it to his lips. Before Arthur knows it, Mordred’s brought Arthur’s fingers to his lips and sucked them in. Arthur feels his tongue around his fingers, the soft, slow swirl of it. When Mordred pulls away, he smiles, and Arthur knows what he must do. Again, he strokes Mordred’s arse, then presses a slick finger into Mordred. Mordred gasps at the entry, but composes himself almost immediately after the intrusion. 

It goes like this, all tantalizing touches and wandering fingers, for some time, until Mordred moans restlessly, and Arthur has ignored his own hard prick, arousal painful and desperate within him. Mordred gives him a sidelong look with his eyes, and for a moment, Arthur fancies them yellow as a hawk’s perspicacious and cruel. 

“I’ve been ungrateful to my liege-lord,” he whispers, a hint of a laugh in his voice. “Here, let me. ” 

He places his hands on Arthur’s shoulders, lifting himself up and bringing himself down, open and ready, onto Arthur’s leaking cock. He’s warm, so warm, and the tight heat of him makes Arthur feel as though he’ll come as quickly as he had in his youth, when lust and love were both so easily obtained and wild. How long has it been since he’s done this? And why, why, why, must it be his son? 

It’s hard to thrust like this, with Mordred’s legs wrapped tight around Arthur’s body, but after some readjustment, they work out a rhythm, Mordred’s motion and Arthur’s feeding each other in slow waves, heat and touch and the feel of bodies sweating, gasps and moans from the both of them. 

Mordred babbles, already coming apart, it seems. Most of it, to Arthur’s ears, is nonsense about battles and war, references to his home, to darkness, and to cold, and something about kings and crowns. Mordred will, Arthur think, look lovely in a crown, if he can ever forgive his father. _Maybe he’ll forgive me and he’ll want me still_ , Arthur thinks, and horrified tears prickle in his eyes. 

Mordred’s voice chokes off again at Arthur’s touch, as he spreads beneath his father’s fingers. Arthur hushes him/In that moment, he isn’t a king, and he isn’t a father. He’s only alive, a singing flame of lust and light, and he thrusts into the heat of Mordred, and feels his fluttering bird-like pulse beneath gentle hands. He forgets what he had meant to do and how he’d meant to help his only son and maybe heir. He just goes forward, jostling for sensation. 

But even in the search for his own pleasure, Arthur remember’s Mordred’s, reaching down to take Mordred’s length in his hands. He must be gentle, he must be kind, must pay attention not to the awkward twist of his own arm but to the sounds that Mordred’s making, all low and breathy and delighted, until, at last, he comes beneath Arthur’s grip, spilling on Arthur’s hand and on both their chests in an ecstasy of movement. 

Arthur’s own orgasm follows soon after, with ecstasy and wild joy, and then the sharp, cold remembrance of what he’s done and who he’s fucked. Instead of bile, tears rise up again, not just the prickles this time, and he weeps, openly. They stream down his face while they lie together, while Arthur still runs his hands down Mordred’s body, trying to convince himself he’s saved him. 

Mordred leans in as if to kiss, but instead he flicks out his tongue. Slowly, gently, he licks Arthur’s tears away. His tongue is warm, damp, and heavy against Arthur’s flushed skin, almost soothing. Arthur still jerks away, shocked and startled. Mordred looks up at him, smiling widely. The embers in the hearth are low and red, and his face is veiled in shadow. Mordred breathes hard. 

“What was that?” Arthur asks. 

“It’s salty,” Mordred says wonderingly. “Salty as the sea, and as your blood will be when I take your crown, father.” 

Arthur startles. 

“Father?” he asks. 

“Of course,” Mordred replies. “Father, and liege-lord, and all those other wonderful things. Did you think I didn’t know? Did you think I wouldn’t understand the whole rotten core of this kingdom? It needs to be cleansed, my mother said. But I don’t want to clean it. I want to have fun, and taste the salt and meat of life, and wear your crown.” 

“Forgive me,” Arthur says at last. “Forgive me everything.” 

Mordred only smiles, and in his eyes, Arthur sees storms at sea and the circling of carrion-crows. 

“I’ll have your crown as forgiveness, Father,” Mordred says. “A token.” 

From the chamber’s little window, Arthur can hear the sound of waves far below, dashing white spray on the empty cliffs. There’s a storm brewing over the sea tonight. Wild winds and wild water will dance below. Behind Arthur, Mordred still smiles, at once gentle and fierce, and once again, Arthur thinks of hawks. They can be hooded all you like, but in the end, they are still wild things. And when they soar on beating wings, they still fall upon their warm and living prey. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy! It's been a great pleasure to write this. Sources I'm drawing on here have largely been Malory and Tennyson, with occasional interludes from general Arthurian osmosis and the melange of other stuff I've read. 
> 
> Title from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_.


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